Monday, November 14, 2016

Big Brother 21st Century Style

The barrier between the outside world and
the sacred space inside your head is eroding at an accelerated rate. An
algorithm has been developed that scours social media posts and can predict
depression in the poster with 70% accuracy, which is twice the accuracy rate of
human doctors. Elsewhere scientists have developed nanobots that release drugs
into your system when a particular ‘mind-state’ is detected.

The desire to identify and ensure early
intervention for depressive and possibly suicidal tendencies is clearly
understandable. Similarly, being able to trigger drug release in patients when
they’re experiencing a seizure minimises improper dosing and ensures the drugs
are extremely well-targeted. But as a science fiction author, I can imagine all
kinds of alternative applications for these technologies that we might not
applaud so readily.

No doubt the security agencies already have
algorithms scouring our likes and tweets for hints of terrorist leanings, but
the algorithm isn’t yet so refined that it provides actionable data on its own
– or I don’t think it does. But it may get to that stage in the not-too-distant
future and then we could be in Minority Report PreCrime territory, where even a
mild inclination in our social media stream will be evidence of guilt.

This type of ‘preventative enforcement’
could go even further if we think about those drug-filled nanobots. Once a
particular synaptic firing sequence that the government finds particularly
abhorrent – say a desire for social change – is identified and targeted, the
nanobots swarming through or body could automatically alter our mood or even
tranquilise us. If that happens, any potential revolution will be quashed
before it can truly begin.

This article originally appeared in Beyond,
my free newsletter for lovers of science and science fiction. Sign up here -
http://eepurl.com/btvru1

Mailing List Pop-Up

SF quotes

"the Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state as well as more efficient at using it once they had. That was good enough for the Culture."— Iain M. Banks